Experiential Avoidance →Willingness
When challenging thoughts and feelings come up, our tendency is to avoid them—or even better, to avoid situations that might cause them. In ACT we call this experiential avoidance.
The problem is that difficult thoughts and feelings come up all the time, and often in situations that we don’t really want to get away from. What we want to learn to do is contact discomfort when it’s in service of doing things that we care about. In ACT, we call this willingness.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy tells us to use discomfort as motivation.